Das Nibelungenlied: Song of the Nibelungs (review)

Nobody should blame any author or translator for the sins of the copy-writers who supply the blurbs for books, but the declaration on the cover of this new verse translation of the Nibelungenlied invites comment, since the interested but casual reader might well be influenced by it. The translator, we are told, ‘brings to life in English for the first time the great German epic poem that inspired Richard Wagner’s opera tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen and J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. His verse translation underscores the all-important formal aspects of the poem and preserves its haunting beauty.’ The factual errors can be dismissed: Wagner’s operas used in their final form the rather different Norse legends, and Tolkien famously denied any such influence (indeed, it is difficult to see one, especially given the absence of any special rings in the Nibelungenlied). Beyond that, however, the poem hasbeen brought to life perfectly well by the excellent prose translations of D. G. Mowatt for Everyman’s Library (1962) and A. T. Hatto for Penguin (1965), and this in turn raises the questions first of whether a verse translation is an acceptable idea, and second, of whether this one really does preserve the formal aspects. Beowulf, of course, has appeared in at least three major poetic translations (by Michael Alexander, Seamus Heaney, and Edwin Morgan), but the form of Beowulfis more acceptable to a modern English eye and ear. The problems with the form of the Nibelungenlied are far greater, and verse translations have been rare since the nineteenth century.

The book contains a brief foreword by Michael Dirda. He claims that the translation closely emulates the original’s structure and language; and he modifies slightly the references to Wagner and to The Lord of the Rings, indicating only that this is the kind of work which influenced Tolkien. However, he also makes the extraordinary remark that medieval epics might have provoked their audience to think that this is as good as Tolkien, had they ever heard of Tolkien. This foreword is followed by a concise and accurate introduction to the Nibelungenlied and its reception by a specialist, Edward R. Haymes, who clarifies the matter of Wagner’s sources, and points out equally clearly that Tolkien did not use the work, thus ending Tolkien’s rather misleading guest appearance as a marketing device. To Haymes’ valuable (mostly American) bibliography one might usefully add Francis E. Sandbach, The Nibelungenlied and Gudrun in England and America(London, 1904) for material on nineteenth-century translations.

The translator himself contributes a brief preliminary address to the reader, and twenty pages of notes on the translation at the end. The address draws attention to the difficulties of translation with individual words, and indeed highlights the word man, to be translated as ‘man’ but which ‘in fact refers only to fighting men’. In Middle High German it can of course mean ‘man’ in any sense (including ‘male’ and ‘husband’), but the most important sense for the Nibelungenlied is that of ‘vassal’. The notes are somewhat heterogeneous, looking for example at the date of the original (covered by Haymes) and commenting on aspects of the narrative itself (characterization, humour, magic). More germane to the actual translation are the discussions of names, tone, and metre. Names can be difficult in putting material like this into English. In my own translation of Kudruna number of years ago I was constrained to avoid calling Fruote der alteanything that sounded like ‘old Frute’, and again in a version of Walthariusit was clear that the comesof Worms could not be called ‘the Earl of Worms’ (‘the early worm . . . ?’), even though ‘count’ is not an English title. Here, however, there are few such problems. Worms is referred to throughout as Wurms, which may avoid unfortunate associations even though there is not much justification for this spelling, nor indeed for Bechalaren, which is neither Middle...